September 16, 2022 - Wisdom Teeth
What makes you question the concept of “real”?
There are some things in life I find cognitively overwhelming. To name a few—thinking about money, reading conversations on LinkedIn, my cat’s pink toes when she sleeps all day, swimming in open water, and someone running a finger up the length of my spine.
Add listening to UK producer Jorg Kuning’s Chosta-del-sol to the list. The four tracks on this punchy EP are so utterly delightful that, in some moments, my brain can’t compute its own reality. Clinky, plunky, squishy synths make me feel so happy my brain isn’t sure what to do with all the information. If cute aggression can exist for music, then I have discovered it. I want to squeeze these songs until they burst.
Kuning collects sounds like a discriminating magpie with a kitchen sink. Then he engineers the whole gamut of human sound cognition. A lot of producers create spatial effects in their recordings that feel three-dimensional to a girl like me who listens alone, but Kuning takes this beyond the standard audiophile’s party trick.
He hypnotizes you with techno-house beats to get your head bouncing along, then sculpts auditory illusions that surround you in play and a bit of chaos. You’ll hear bubbly drinks pouring into a glass, a chair scraping on the wooden floor, an intake of breath, a magic flute, glittering glissandos, silly diphthongs, a dripping faucet, and a bass that’s electronically fuzzy like a lollipop that fell out of your mouth onto the carpet. It’s like an inside joke from start to finish, though you’ll enjoy being the punchline.
‘Chosta-del-sol’ is both the opener, the namesake, and imo the standout track, a luscious build-up to a rolling boil. ‘Ex-tensor’ is a close second, trippy, experiencing what it feels like to be an air molecule flying through a sexy bar on a Friday night, passed around mouth-to-mouth from sips of bubbly to conversations of youths full of heat and potential. ‘Rhos Fiddle’ sets you up, casually, with some beeps and boops, for a beautiful trickling flute breakdown that will almost make you sob, until the bouncing bits return to focus and remind you that this EP is a celebration of joyful momentum. No pausing for long. Drink the juice. ‘TB-SB’ draws out the ending almost too long, but this helps put the energy to rest.
Something I love about techno is that the entire genre is built to be experiential. It’s all about experiencing the physicality of sound and the people in a room, unable to speak to each other with words, feeling meaty vibrations in your sternums, moving in space together, affecting the acoustics, a fleeting, temporary ecosystem. Jorg Kuning’s Chosta-del-sol recreates this dancefloor ethos with levity that’s accessible in a less communal listening experience, such as me in a blanket on my couch alone on a Monday night.
With a euphoria of the senses, the vibe is like eating cold cherries in the sunshine: icy, sweet, and hot. You may just giggle at the contrast. Your spine will certainly tingle. And overwhelming your brain with positive emotions will help life feel a bit more manageable for a while.
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
— Khalil Gibran, The Prophet
☔